Milkduds

Thoughts on Firefox 2.0 Beta 2

September 11th, 2006

Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 was released recently, so I decided to check it out. I’m mainly writing this for Trey, since I know he thinks I should blog more when I have shareable information! Anyway, here are my first impressions of the new beta:

• I hate the fact that most of my extensions don’t work when I install a beta. Thanks to the Nightly Tester Tools extension, though, everything is working fine.
• I really like the fact that the beta doesn’t overwrite my stable release’s program directory. They are in separate directories under Program Files (in Windows), but share the same profile information.
• The updated theme is nice, though I miss the old Home icon. I think the new one is barely noticeable and blends in too much with the background.
• I haven’t tested this yet, but I think the beta starts faster.
• The location of the list of extensions has changed. It is still under Tools, but now you have to click on Add-ons. From there you can access extensions AND themes.
• Session recovery looks nice - This looks like it will basically replace the Crash Recovery extension I just recently installed. If you start Firefox after a crash, it asks if you want to recover your session, or start a new one.
• Maybe it’s just the way I’ve laid things out, but I don’t like the way the quick search bar has gotten longer. It used to be so nice and compact, but is taking up more real estate now.
• I like the new spell check feature. Oh, look at that, I just misspelled spell check and misspelled! Haha!
• This is my biggest complaint, but I think I’ll have to live with it: The close tab button has been moved from the far right of the tab bar to a close button on each individual tab. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve moved my mouse to the far right to close a tab today! Trey brought up a good point about this. He liked the old way because he could close a bunch of tabs very quickly. Now, he’ll have to either close all but the current tab, or click on each tab’s close button. They’ve also changed the close function so that you go to the last tab you had open instead of the last tab in the list.

That’s all I have for now. If I find something mind blowing, then I’ll update this post.

Entry Filed under: Technology